Cool. Reminds me of Dream Theater
NGADM Round 5: FINALS
Good luck to my competitor Waterflame! Congratulations to everybody involved, there's nothing like sharing a whole bunch of new great music within a short amount of time, and receiving incredible feedback from all the kind, helpful, and honest judges. NGADM totally gave me a chance to improve on everything I wanted to work on. I was never able to scrape up the motivation until now, and learning all these new things motivates me to write more after this anyway.
And another thing: THANK YOU CAMOSHARK. For helping me out here and on Fly me to Blue earlier. Here, she provided the trumpet and sax player for this song, and was a big help during the finishing touches. Please, listen to hers genius music, she's out of this world:
http://camoshark.newgrounds.com/
Thanks everyone! Hope you like the track! c:
Lyrics:
Way too wicked and wild
The second from the sun is the closest thing to hell,
You will suffocate! You'll suffocate!
Far, far from feeling the flame
But close enough to melt on the second from the sun
We will lose our minds! We will wisp away!
At least the shame is gone
To violate our precious preservation
Pack us in a shuttle and send us toward the sun,
But not all the way!
There's a quicker way..
Does anybody even deserve to live?
Second from the sun answers with her deadly pressure
Crushing all aboard
Crushing all of man
Breathe all the oxygen you can and
Enjoy another sun tan before we bite the dust
If I'm literal..
Luckily the love you loathe'll leave
Searing in the clouds, you'll just fry all your emotions
And cease to exist!
War went so sour
Bombs burnt the land
We failed our sons, we were so wrong
Relied on god to save us
Fly toward the sun
Leave this wasted land
Fire will take you anyway
Venus take us
At least our death is quick to come out here
God gives you the confidence to die
Otherwise you'd be the loser who loves the life he has
Is that so backwards?
Does it matter now? Ooo!
Sound, sound asleep in seconds flat,
We will die a hasty death thanks to all of those who tried
To save their soul!
Way too wicked are we
We're parasites
Exploring, devouring..
My heart begs Venus
To reach out and
Take us
Cool. Reminds me of Dream Theater
Bad ass!!!
The first thing I thought of was Mars Volta.. This is an excellent track here.
NGADM Final and stuff.
Put out a crazy awesome tune, won the NGADM, gave me an eargasm.
Really, I'm running out of ways to say I think your stuff is awesome. As before, the riffing was awesome, the progish sound was very well done and kept things very interesting, the vocals (harmonies and all) were spot on and had a unique "Kor-Rune feel" to them. Just awesome all around.
The only complaints I have are every so often throughout the song, I noticed there was kind of a static or white noise in the mix... I'm not sure if that was intentional or not, but it confused me as to why it was there, felt very out of place... or maybe I'm going crazy or my speakers are starting to die... I dunno...
That and the chug felt extremely similar throughout the entire song, for the most part it held the same general rhythm all throughout, which felt a little repetitive after a while.
That aside, awesome work, flowed between numerous moods, kept things very interesting, and as mentioned above, overall... gave me an eargasm. 8.5/10.
Congratz champ.
No, you're hearing living room fuzz, yes. I need one of them mic-stand vocal booth thingies
Thanks for the review! <:
This is your NGADM Round 5 Review.
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SO, you won the competition! Congrats AGAIN for claiming first place! I've got to say that I'm really glad you found out about the NGADM. Otherwise I wouldn't have ever listened to AWESOME MUSIC like this.
You know this is a pretty noticeable change in style from what you usually make. I mean I can still tell this is yours, especially in the style of singing (and the actual voice of course) but this feels a lot more rhythmic and structured than your previous works. It's totally not scatterbrained at all which was a really nice change. I actually think your structure is pretty damn awesome, and I especially love your progression to bits. You really managed to make everything flow well and your transitions are also fantastic.
Moreover, I'm hearing some lovely details. The subtle snare roll at 0:53, the orgasmic little melodic embellishment at 1:00, the new layer of rhythm guitar that plays at 1:27, the AMAZING descending scale at 1:39 (seriously that little detail makes me smile every time), the organ in the background at 1:54, the hissing at 2:38... I can honestly go on and on. Lovely brass solos too. Kudos to camoshark for that.
This is also has some of the best singing from all of the songs I've heard from you so far. I love how your vocal line fits so well with the song. Truth be told, sometimes the vocals in your previous songs (with the exception of Don't We All) sounded a bit tacked on at times, as if you first made the song and then tried to fit in the vocals wherever you can, but here you seem to have integrated them a lot better. I love the parts where you've got the words timed with those heavy guitar strums and drum hits such as at 0:07. It fit very well and really made the track enjoyable. Lyrics are awesome too, and it's cool that you talked about Venus. Venus is pretty underrated, since Mercury's closest to the Sun so most people think Mercury is the hottest planet in our solar system, when in reality Venus is, thanks to the greenhouse effect. BUT I DIGRESS.
Your mixing... man. Amazing. Sounds a little heavier and bassier than what you usually make but still, wow. The guitars especially sound exceptional. My only complaint mixing-wise is that the vocals in the intro at the very beginning blare out a bit too much. Usually I wouldn't complain about something like that but since it's the start of a song, the vocals do come in as a bit of an unpleasant surprise. I do like your new approach for an intro though, and I love how it starts with just vocals and then the drums and guitar kick in. Nice idea. Ending's pretty awesome too. I would've let the last note ring for another five seconds or so, slowly fading out, but that's just me.
The reason I gave this a 9 rather than a 10 is that this feels a lot less like the revolutionary jazz/metal fusion music you've made in previous rounds and becoming a bit more standardised. Sure, it's still revolutionary and has great composition as usual... but it just doesn't have the great atmospheres Omniwitch presents, the amazing diversity of Child of the Trough, and the interesting approaches of Chemicals.
The consequence of this is that it just isn't all that interesting throughout. You might've tried too hard to avoid making it scatterbrained and all-over-the-place since now you can almost say it's gone to the other extreme. The guitar rhythms supported by punchy drums and stretched-out vocal notes got pretty old eventually, and while this features awesome brass solos and guitar riffs (and a very welcomed reintroduction of the main theme at 4:45 with new melodic layers and an awesome melodic change at 5:06), it just doesn't feel like it does 7 minutes justice. The only real break was towards the end. You've got to find a balance between making it structured and making sense (which you nailed) and keeping it diverse and interesting...
Still, I'm honestly just nitpicking here. This is wonderful and I have yet to hear something from you that changes my opinion of you being one of the best artists on Newgrounds. Great work!
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9/10
Thank you for the detailed and length review! I'm happy the NGADM exists, I could've never put together the motivation to write music by myself. <:
Yeah, I don't write a lot of fast and loud music, but I was willing to try this time around, see if I could do it. I think my voice is a little too frail and innocent for loud stuff, but who cares XD
2:38 hissing pad is secretly overused for all of NGADM, LOL. I hope I made it subtle enough, I used it in every track I've submitted for the competition except Don't We All.
And you are right, all the tracks except Don't We All had vocals tacked on after I wrote the track. I had a different writing process for Venus, a process that actually included vocals as I wrote. For the entire competition except Venus, I actually ignored the writing process and went straight to recording, I guess that is how I end up losing my train of thought and going to something completely different and irrelevant. Oh well, now that I have more than 2 weeks to make a song, and a dickload of fantastic feedback, it won't be a problem any longer! <:
yeah man Venus is pretty brutal, I was reading about it in the Guiness Book of World Records at work. Honestly though, when I can't think of lyrics I just write about space, cause there's usually enough crazy shit happening out there to talk about.
I agree about it getting boring, I ended up trying to compensate with a bunch of inconsistent guitar effects, layers, harmonies, and of course, the presence of lyrics. cause a voice always makes a boring section exciting <: until the voice gets boring LOL
Thanks again for the awesome review Step! I had fun with the competition and am looking forward to next year!
Please contact me if you would like to use this in a project. We can discuss the details.